Player and Played
by Neriad13
Summary: Mods may be all well and good for you, but did you ever think of what it is you're doing to your poor character?


Player and Played

The Thalmor Embassy was all colors and gaiety, music and lights. The province's rich and successful danced around each other in an intricate ballet of politeness and etiquette. It was all just as dangerous, if not more so, as a frantic fight with a dragon in the great outdoors.

Gemma put a hand on her pounding chest and gasped for air as Malborn jumped in at the last possible second and called the First Emissary away from her. That had been terrifying beyond words. She'd just walked in the door and who had to bump right into her but the head of the Thalmor herself in Skyrim? Her tongue had been tied. She fumbled about frenetically for words and she could feel a huge sweat stain quietly seeping down the back of Delphine's nice party clothes. Oh, it'd be great trip back to Riverwood with that in tow. And a wonderful explanation for Delphine, no doubt.

But none of that mattered now – all that lay before her was the vital mission. She had to infiltrate the Embassy proper and find out about the dragons! Everyone's lives, _everyone's very souls_ depended upon it. She clenched her fists and narrowed her eyes. Yes, she'd find some way to slip past this nest of vipers. For Skyrim, she had to.

She eyed First Emissary Elenwen's back, retreating back into the crowd with a sigh of relief. The heat was off of her and she felt considerably cooler with the terrifying Altmer on the other side of the room. Now, if she could just slip in a word with Malborn…

"Oh my God."

No. No. Oh, no. Please, not now. What was it going to be this time?

"Holy _shit_!" the voice exclaimed excitedly. She could hear the tapping of keys in the back of her head. "You have got to fireball her right now! Ohmanohmanohman, this is going to be _epiiiiic_!"

His voice had trilled on the final word, high-pitched and irritating to the max. Gemma put her hands over her ears and squeezed her head until she thought she would crush it, but as usual, that didn't help things. She was fairly certain that she was the only person who could hear him. Surely this couldn't be normal for everyone. He was constantly in her ears, rambling on about things she had no hope of understanding, running her into walls and off of cliffs. Far too often to be considered sane, he told her to kill people.

Once, back when she had just escaped Helgen and had somehow inescapably taken to slaughtering every chicken she ran into, he had told her that his name was Michael and that he was her creator and master. Then he had laughed haughtily until he had starting coughing and had to stop to get his 'inhaler,' whatever that could be.

"Come onnnnn!" Michael whined, playing on her delicate nerves, "One little fireball. That's all I want. You checked your weapons at the door, but they can't exactly take your magic from you, right?"

"That's true…" Gemma murmured, looking at her hands. She had to admit, it would be great fun to fireball the First Emissary and take the Thalmor down a pretty notch. Then she looked at her surroundings once more. There was an Altmer guard every couple of feet, mixed in with the party guests, their hands never far from their weapons, ever alert to the whisper of a threat. She clenched her fists and dropped them to her sides.

"Gah!" the voice gasped, furiously clicking something at the back of her mind, "Attack mode! $%&! _Come on already_!"

She heard a sound like a hand punching an oaken table. It was followed by a loud, incoherent yowl and then some quiet sobbing. She couldn't help but smile to herself and feel grim satisfaction at the distant noise.

"P-Please?" he wheedled, his voice cracking as he spoke, "It'll just be so damn awesome. Imagine it, a fireball from out of nowhere just nabs that bitch in the back. No one saw it coming!"

"I won't." Gemma hissed under her breath, looking sideways to see if anyone was watching her talking to herself, "The guards are going to kill me if I try that. They'll all jump on me at once and tear me to shreds. I can't fight back – Malborn's got all my armor and I'm naked without it. Not that I'm any less naked _with_ the armor."

"Aw…but you'll be perfectly fine. I'll just reload a save and it'll never have happened. For the lulz?"

"What?" she gasped, bile rising in her throat, "You think that I don't remember every single time I've ever died? That I haven't had nightmares about everything you've ever put me through?"

She shivered, memories of her last visit to High Hrothgar running through her chattering skull. She had climbed up to the top of a tower in the monks' courtyard and taken in the view. It was a beautifully clear day and she could literally see her house in Whiterun from there. And then, her feet had inexorably moved forward, closer and closer to the edge. She'd found herself leaping into the blue sky, spreading her arms like a bird. She remembered crashing down the mountainside, the sound of her own neck snapping, the feel of every single bone in her body being ground into powder as she slid down cliff after cliff. It made her tremble uncontrollably every single time she thought about it. What was worse was that it probably wasn't the last time he'd do that to her.

Michael was whining again and tapping keys at the back of her head. She'd been tuning him out for a little while, but that could only work for so long. His voice was like the low buzz of Dwemer machinery. It never stopped running in the background and it never shut up.

"Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit." he groaned pathetically, "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuu…fine. Fine. How about a deal?"

"What deal could you possibly make with me?" Gemma asked snidely, crossing her arms.

"How about…" he went on, his words accented by the tapping of a finger on a hard surface, "How about…I download a nice new mod for you?"

Gemma's eyebrow twitched in pure rage.

"I HATE MODS!" she shrieked loudly, startling a few of the less drunken partygoers and causing one of the servants to drop a tray of brandy all over the expensive tile floor. All eyes were on her, burning into her soul with new ferocity. She put a hand over her mouth and retreated closer to the door through which she'd entered, where the coast was clearer.

"Sexy daedric armor?" she hissed under her breath, "Are you serious? Have you ever worn anything that constricting, that ridiculous? By the Nine, arrows just go right through it! And the North Wind! And every man I meet just keeps ogling my chest and won't look me in the eye!"

"But it looks so…"

"And then on top of that you found some dark magic that removes every single undergarment in the province. And oh, yes…" she paused, a wicked smile coming over her face, "…remember when you downloaded the buttplug mod?"

"I had that for an hour, tops! It's off my system!"

He sounded panicky, shaky, off-kilter. Gemma went on.

"I'll tell you, it was an hour to remember. And then you said something about your mother walking in and yelling at you. I think I may have even heard her voice myself. To think, that even daedra have nagging mothers…"

"Uhhhhh…" he moaned, making a sound like a skull repeatedly banging a table, "But you liked the Pogo Hammer, right? And the Dragonbone Weapons were very nice! And you can craft scrolls now, because of a mod. And I just found this thing called 'Flying Ring' that sounds great."

"Hmm." Gemma muttered, thinking it over, "I did like the Pogo Hammer. But I'm still not dying for its ilk. And you'll just get impatient with me and download it anyway, won't you?"

"Shit." he answered quietly, delicately, "I didn't want to do this."

Time froze. The music stopped and the dancers halted mid-step. Gemma's breath caught in her throat and a creeping sense of terror stole down the back of her neck.

"I'm going to force you to attack with console commands."

"Ha!" she guffawed, loudly, brazenly, like a horse, "You think you can punish me more than you already have? Sir, I have not slept in five days! I have stood in the rain for hours at your insane command! I don't remember the last time I had anything to eat! And then you had to make me marry Aela because you're the one who likes her! And now Vilkas thinks I'm a lesbian and won't even give me a lick of consideration! If you think this is anything worse than usual, you are very wrong!"

She fell to her knees and put her hands over her ears, preparing for the worst. He'd done so many horrible things with console commands in the past. With whatever they were, he could warp reality to his every whim. And his whims were twisted and cruel. He'd summoned hordes of monsters for no reason, unleashed a dozen dragons at once on Winterhold, changed her appearance at will multiple times, filled an entire city with cheese and taken the fight out of opponents with one stroke of a key. It was going to be bad. Why did she have to argue with a man who total control over her life and Mundus itself? It was stupid and wrong and now she'd have to pay for it despite her bravado.

Nothing happened.

She kept waiting. Slowly, she opened her eyes and stood back up. Time was still frozen, as it had been and nothing had changed. Michael was peculiarly silent. A mischievous grin bloomed on her face as her spirits steadily rose.

"You can't do it!" she laughed, her voice booming, as she danced around the still room, "You don't know how! You don't even know if there is a way!"

" $%& it." he mumbled irritably, pressing keys, "I'm spawning bears."

It was magnificent. In the space of a moment, time was moving forward again and a wave of angry bears surged from nowhere through the Embassy. They tore into the shrieking party guests with their fierce claws, taking down all who stood in their path and tearing the rest to a bloody pulp. In the midst of the scrum, it dawned on Gemma that this was the absolute perfect time to make her exit.

"Malborn!" she whispered loudly, hurriedly jumping over the bar and finding the Bosmer cowering in fear behind it, "Let's move it!"

Minutes later, she'd found her smuggled gear and gotten deeper into the Embassy. The mission was back on track and the salvation of Skyrim was eminent.

As she ran into a Thalmor lackey and casually parried blades with him, she thought about all that had happened back in the party room.

"You know…" she said aloud, directing her words to Michael and not the severely confused Altmer before her, "…this really didn't turn out half bad for either of us."

"Hmmpf." Michael grunted back, against the backdrop of furiously clicking keys.

"What?" he asked gruffly, as the elf finally fell, "You thought I didn't care about you?"


End file.
